Policing Victorian England: From Raw Lobsters to Beloved Bobbies

2.5Policing Victorian England: From Raw Lobsters to Beloved Bobbies

The policemen were also to be easily recognizable in the street so that they could not be suspected of being the government’s spies. The officers were from the start clad in dark blue uniforms consisting of a “high-collared frock-coat, with 8 large brass buttons, leather belt, blue trousers, top hat, gloves and a strong baton” (Rosenthal). The officers carried a whistle to summon help and a truncheon tucked into a special pocket, and at night they also carried a bull’s eye lantern. Originally, they were supposed to wear red but that was decided against as it resembled red coats of the army. The uniform earned the force two nicknames, “Peel’s Raw Lobsters” comparing the colour to the military uniforms which were already known as lobsters (“The Formation”), and “Peel’s Blue Devils”.

Peel hoped that the new force might reduce the crime rates in London; four days before the first policemen started on their beats, The Times expressed people’s expectations of the new police to relieve the metropolis of crime altogether: “Officers and police constables should endeavour to distinguish themselves by such vigilance as may render it impossible for any one to commit a crime within that portion of the town under their charge” (“New”). And although the expectations were great, the outlook for the first officers was not very good.

The first years of the police were characterized by an enormous turnover of recruits, which was the consequence of several factors: The salary was low, only twenty-one shillings a week for a constable (Emsley, EB 116); the discipline was harsh, the beats were long,⁴ and for many joining the police was only a way how to establish themselves in the town or pass a period of unemployment. Since they had to face adverse conditions, isolation, and strict discipline, “many men signed up only to resign within weeks of joining, while even larger numbers left within the first 12 months of service” (Taylor 89). The first Bobbies were usually recruited from the working class; “the ideal police recruit was an agricultural labourer who was seen to have the necessary physical strength and the appropriate mental qualities of stoicism and defence” (Taylor 89); but the recruits actually came from a wide range of trades from blacksmiths, through potters to textile workers. High turnovers resulted from the fact that the recruits often returned to their original trades because the policeman’s job was a new occupation without any prestige attached; and that the training was minimal and the beat work required strict self-discipline.

Those who were not able to conform to high standards found themselves dismissed. In the first years dismissals ran very high: In the first year of existence of the East Riding constabulary, 42 were dismissed, which equals the size of the whole force. This was an extreme case but even in Staffordshire, which was a more typical example, one third of the recruits was dismissed (Taylor 94), and many of these resulted from drunkenness, neglect of duty or sexual misconduct (Taylor 95). Police officers were required not to drink and smoke in public, and they had to pay attention to their appearance. During the early years, they had to wear the uniform even when they were off duty (Taylor 93). Private lives of the officers also had to be beyond reproach. They had to be seen in church, avoid debts and lead exemplary family lives. In some forces the choice of the future wife had to be approved and the women were forbidden to work. “Once married, domestic respectability was expected. As well as being not allowed to work, constables’ wives in many forces were not allowed to keep pigs, fowls and even dogs” (Taylor 94). Constables could not keep a cow, they were not allowed to take in a lodger or sell products from their gardens and until 1887 they could not vote (Emsley, CSE 238). Consequently, as mentioned above, as soon as the conditions in their original trades improved, the recruits left the police. This made it very difficult to establish a force of experienced men and win respect of the public.

By the end of the century the attitude to policing as a career had, nevertheless, changed. Although the wages were not exceptionally high, in contrast to work in industry, they were regular. Those who stayed could hope for a pension and also for promotion. Since the very beginning, the idea was to fill the ranks ‘from below’ (Wade 33) and many recruits found the possibility of climbing the promotional ladder appealing. As the body of long-term officers grew, they could provide better advice to those considering the same occupation and, consequently, numbers of misinformed recruits resigning within weeks after joining considerably declined.

There were also other benefits that came with the job. Some forces offered subsidized housing, cheap coal or helped with water and gas bills; other provided the uniforms or even boots (Taylor 99). Canteens and rest-rooms began to emerge, as well as sports clubs and police bands. The policemen began to see themselves as belonging to a distinctive culture and their job as a craft of its own right.

The perception of the police by the public also changed. In the early years they were seen as a military force that was sent by the government to control the working class and to impose an alien moral code on them. It was the policeman who was blamed for destroying lifestyle and past-times of the working class: “closing down fairs and markets, preventing cockfights, tightening controls over drinking” (Rawlings 143). To the poor “the coming of the new police only meant a greater chance of being arrested for ‘drunkenness’, ‘loitering’, ‘common assault’ [or] ‘vagrancy’ (Ignatieff 27). But as much as they resented this intrusion, they could hope for the help when they became victims of an attack or theft, which they experienced more often than other social classes.

The middle and upper classes that were initially concerned about their rights and liberties soon saw the advantages of the policeman’s presence in the streets and admired his efforts to instil decency and order in the working class. Their hostility faded and “within 25 years of his first manifestation, the English ‘Bobby’ was becoming, in the perception of the propertied and respectable classes of Victorian society, a pillar of the constitutional and legal structure of that society” (Emsley, EP 64). The popularity of the police reached its peak after the Great Exhibition of 1851 when the Bobbies were admired for the gentility and politeness with which they oversaw the whole event. On the other hand, the police attracted fierce criticism for their apparent brutality with which they handled the Chartists’ demonstrations (Emsley, GBB 53) and the failure of the Jack the Ripper case. Generally the support of the police broadened and the unarmed, non-military policeman became the nation’s favourite. It was, after all, the English police that was at the end of the nineteenth century described by some commentators as the best police in the world.